State education chief defends teacher evaluations

Florida's interim education commissioner says score glitches under the new teacher evaluation system are being fixed and there's no reason to delay its implementation.

ANNIE MARTINEDUCATION WRITER

DAYTONA BEACH — State officials released a revised report about the state's new controversial teacher evaluation tool that is based on student test scores.The revised report includes minor changes that show how Flagler, Volusia and statewide teachers fared under the new system.Florida's interim education commissioner told worried lawmakers Thursday that glitches in the first release of scores under the state's new teacher evaluation system are being fixed and that there's no reason to delay its implementation. The Department of Education took down a website posting that showed nearly 97 percent of Florida teachers were rated "effective" or "highly effective" in the last school year within hours of putting it up Wednesday."This is a painful year," Pam Stewart told members of the Senate Education Appropriations Subcommittee. "Any time you implement something this large for the first time, there are growing pains."The report includes the number of teachers, administrators and other instructional staff who received "highly effective, effective, needs improvement, developing'' and "unsatisfactory" ratings in each district and school. Under state law, the value-added model — comparing how students scored on tests to how they were expected to perform — began counting last school year for part of the evaluation score for teachers, principals and other instructional staff. Other factors, such as classroom observations and lesson plans, make up the rest of the evaluation.For many teachers, particularly those in subject areas or grade levels where students do not take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, evaluations are based on schoolwide test scores.Districts are required to implement the value-added model, but they're free to adapt it. Flagler, for example, allowed high school teachers who do not teach subjects included on the FCAT to compute their value-added scores using data from other assessments like Advanced Placement Tests. This year, they're looking at allowing teachers in kindergarten through eighth grade to do the same.Teachers across the state generally did well on their evaluation, with 97 percent earning the top two ratings. About 40 percent of Volusia teachers and 90 percent of Flagler teachers were deemed "highly effective." Statewide, 22 percent of teachers achieved that rating. But Volusia Superintendent Margaret Smith said comparisons between districts are not valid because they were given leeway in how they scored teachers, and schools "handled this very differently." "You cannot make these comparisons because the way districts classify and set ratings varies," Smith said. "I would say that I'm still not certain that the formula that was used at the state is one that is meaningful." Volusia officials notified staff members last week that none of their evaluations will be "negatively impacted" by the new evaluation model after more than 100 teachers complained that student test data dragged down their performance ratings. On Thursday, Smith called it "a very imperfect system.""We did the best with the information and a new implementation that we could," Smith said. "A great deal of caution is the way this needs to be received and reviewed." Flagler Superintendent Janet Valentine said her teachers are generally effective and the evaluation reflects that. "First of all, our students do make good growth," she said. "The (value-added model) score is based on expected growth rather than proficiency."But the district is tweaking the way principals assess their instructional staff. "When the administrators had completed the evaluation, we realized the rubric caused an inflation in the scores," Valentine said.There are other reasons Flagler teachers performed so well. No teacher was rated unsatisfactory during the first year of the new evaluation, as per the union's contract. School Board member Sue Dickinson said teachers and district staff agreed to that policy during negotiations."The fact that nobody received an unsatisfactory is the reason we scored so high up on the other end," Dickinson said.